The ChangingMinds Blog!

Would President Trump lie under oath? Yes and
no. And where might it all go?

I recently answered a question on
Quora about
whether President Donald Trump would lie under oath. Much has been
written on this topic, yet it seems a question to which I could perhaps
add a thought to the debate.

This is what I wrote:

There are two forms of lying:

Saying things that others believe to be untrue.

Saying things that you believe to be untrue.

Trump likely does 1 but not 2. Why?
Because he has a superpower of totally convincing himself
that what is factually untrue, is actually true. This
happens in the moment of what others call lying. Before and
after, he may understand what is true, but when he needs to,
he can totally believe anything. The power of this
superpower is that the conviction with which he states his
?truth? is enough to also convince many other people, or at
least sow seeds of doubt in the facts.

He is not alone in this skill.
Salespeople, politicians, lawyers and others do it all the
time as a part of their job. Fantasists do it to feel good
about themselves and their lives. A reason Trump is so
successful is that he is a grand master at it, able in the
moment to adapt and shift to make new convincing lies. Yes,
successful. Millions voted for him. He dominates the news
and the Republican party. That?s something that few others
could do.

So yes, he will lie under oath, yet
in the moment will not realize he is lying.

And yes, his lying will bring him
crashing down, once he finds himself in a place where he
cannot bluster, bully or buy his way out of trouble. If he
is convicted, he will be outraged as he lies to himself
further, telling himself that he is wholly innocent, that
this is all a plot, and so on. A danger from this is the
civil unrest that could result as his convinced supporters
rise up in protest. And who knows where that would go.

The final point is particularly alarming. When perjury leads to
conviction, what happens? When 60 million are taken in by promises to
help them, when they wholly believe what Trump says, what would they do
if their hero was deposed (and maybe even imprisoned)? Even if a
good proportion of them do nothing much, that still leaves quite a few
million. This is the stuff of revolutions and civil wars. It may seem
incredible, but we live in days where so many norms have been broken, it
is difficult to wholly deny the potential of any outcome, no matter how
unthinkable.

The critical question in any revolution is what
the police and army do. If they join in or stand by, then the revolution
continues. Only if they are successful in putting down revolutionaries
does the revolution die. Egypt is a classic modern example. In the 'Arab
Spring' revolution, the army stood by as Mubarak was deposed. But then
they were not happy with the subsequent order and stepped in. These days
there is not too much revolution going on there. In America, one assumes
that any serious revolution would be quashed, yet the military have a
deep respect for their Commander in Chief, whoever this person is, and
the Republicans seem to be standing behind Trump. I guess we'll see.
2019 will likely be another interesting political year.